Game 162 now looks as if it will be a baseball holiday pretty much every season, the last day filled with the anticipation of Opening Day – but with way more meaning.

It cannot be guaranteed that the final day of the regular season will always pack as much drama and implications as last year and this season. But the confluence of greater parity and the institution of a second wild card in each league in 2012 greatly improve the odds that all the magic – and magic numbers – will not be gone before the season concludes pretty much every year.

So there is no doubt that what Bud Selig wrought is exciting. It just is not fair.

Now to be fair ourselves we should point out that this was no quicky decision to introduce the second wild card. Plenty of constituencies voiced opinions for quite a long time. And it was clear that there was never going to be a perfect system installed that pleased all blocs.

But the imperfections loom over the postseason, namely that winning an inferior division has outsized advantages and – if inflicted with the wild card game – a superior team could have a bad couple of hours Friday and be eliminated by an inferior one.

Look, the two main goals of this new paradigm have been met: 1) Prioritizing the winning of a division and 2) creating a one-and-done wild card game that promises ratings and, thus, pleases MLB’s network partners. In other words, cha-ching wins the day again.

MLB got last-day drama that was mainly about the necessity to win divisions. The A’s beat the Rangers 12-5 to win what was for all intents and purposes a one-game playoff to win the AL West and avoid a one-game wild card playoff. In other words, winning the division meant a ton more in 2012 than 2011.

That is why Joe Girardi has treated the last six weeks like the postseason, pushing relievers and older bodies, in particular, to try to hold off Baltimore. And the Yanks still needed a win last night or an Orioles loss to guarantee the division title, and they happened to get both.

What was interesting was the only team that knew its situation was the Tigers, who won the division with the seventh-best record in the league. That’s right. The Angels and Rays – who both played in superior divisions and will not be in the playoffs finished with better records than Detroit. Yet because they had the worst record Detroit will still draft before the Angels and Rays, and – via rules in the new collective bargaining agreement – be allowed to spend more money on the draft and international signings, too.

In the present, Detroit is locked in as the three seed. So the Tigers have known they will host the first two games of a Division Series on Saturday and Sunday. Now folks say if you want those advantages, then win your division. But not all divisions are created equal. The rest of the AL Central lost the division as much as the Tigers won it. Let’s put it this way, I think both the Rays and Angels win the AL Central, and so would the actual runners-up in the AL East and West.

MLB might have to think about letting teams with superior records, even if they are wild cards, have at least home field advantage as some counterweight to this.

And in the all-divisions-not-being-created equal category, the Braves were going to finish either six or seven games better than the Cardinals, though St. Louis got to go 21-11 against the NL Central doormat Astros and Cubs, the two clear worst teams in the league. St. Louis was never a threat to first-place Cincinnati while Atlanta at least made a race against Washington. The Reds and Nationals went into Wednesday night with the same record.

So in a true measuring stick of 162 games, the Braves showed defined superiority to the Cardinals. Yet because of the one-and-done nature of the wild card game, if Atlanta has three bad hours Friday, it will be eliminated by St. Louis. Again, people will say the Braves should have won their division. Well, they might have if they were in the NL Central and played the Astros and Cubs so much.

The least we can give a superior team over six months is a chance to have a bad three hours by making the wild card a best-of-three. But too many are against adding any more days to the baseball calendar plus the money from the networks is based on the one-and-done, March Madness-esque format.

Thus, we better learn to just enjoy the drama. Complete fairness is not likely to come any time soon.